Department of Information Technology & Electronics

Government of West Bengal

GLOBAL BLOCKCHAIN
CONGRESS
Consensus 2018

|Biswa Bangla Convention Centre|

|18th & 19th December 2018|
 GLOBAL BLOCKCHAIN CONGRESS
Consensus 2018

Introduction
The Department of IT&E, Government of West
Bengal has embarked upon a journey to create a
robust ecosystem that can nurture technology
driven innovation, entrepreneurship and
continuous capacity building. On 13th April, 2018,
DIT&E held a day long knowledge workshop on
Blockchain – ‘Genesis’ hosting national and
international level participants. Around 400
eminent people from the Industry, Corporate,
Academia and Government sector participated in
the event. To continue with the discourse and to
engage with the community on Blockchain and its
benefits for India and its society, an international
blockchain congress was envisioned.

The Global Blockchain Congress – Number of International Speakers: 9

Consensus 2018 held on 18th and 19th December Number of National Speakers: 11
2018 at the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre in Number of Participants on Day 1: 2000+
Kolkata, saw International and National Blockchain Number of Participants on Day 2: 1600+
experts deliberate on a plethora of aspects pertaining
to Blockchain, its advantages, current limitations and
challenges. The event – a first of its kind ever to be
held in Eastern India, saw a heavy footfall of 3600
delegates.

According to World Economic Forum, Blockchain1 (also called distributed ledger) leverages
the resources of a global peer-to-peer network to ensure the integrity of t he value
exchanged among billions of devices without going through a trusted third party. A report
from Forbes on ‘Disruptive Technologies and New Economic Models’ states that -
Blockchain – a disruptive technology, has the potential to transform economic structures,
business models, firms and jobs2.

Highlights of Day 1
At the onset of the event, Shri Swarup Roy (Advisor – Department of IT&E) and Shri Prodip
Mukhopadhyay (Director – Webel Informatics Limited) felicitated the esteemed dignitaries on stage.

1
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Realizing_Potential_Blockchain.pdf
2
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/01/04/disruptive-technologies-and-new-economic-
models/#5003f987b923
Ms. Rosine Kadamani – a Blockchain expert
from Brazil, flanked by Government officials
and other delegates on stage, inaugurated the
event by the lighting of the lamp.

Shri Debashis Sen, IAS, Additional Chief

Secretary, Department of IT&E, Govt. of
West Bengal delivered the Welcome Address
and shared his insights to set the tone for the 2
day, Global Blockchain Congress – Consensus
2018.
 This was followed by a special address by Dr.
Ambarish Dasgupta, Principal Advisor,
DIT&E, and Government of West Bengal.

The next address was made by Mr. Mikhail

Stronchinskiy - ‘Country Representative’ from Russia
and representative of Russoft – an association of
software companies from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Taking this theme forward, in the first talk

of the ‘Key Note Session’, Dr. Bimal Roy,
ISI Kolkata spoke on ‘An Architecture for
Blockchain’. Dr. Roy spoke on Hash
functions and SHA-3. He also deliberated
on the concept of ‘Sponge’ and the use of a
Merkle tree in Blockchain. Dr. Roy also
elucidated on the use of Blockchain for
maintaining land records and the
advantages of doing so.
 The next Key Note Speaker was Ms. Rosine
Kadamani – Co-founder of the Blockchain
Academy in Brazil. In her talk on ‘Blockchain -
origins and current status, and general view on
LATAM situation’, Ms. Kadamani spoke on
Bitcoin and how Blockchain technology was
used in this particular use-case. She then
moved on to Blockchain and the current
applications that are being developed and used
in the area of International Remittances,
Logistics, Supply Chain. She ended her talk
with various Blockchain applications being
developed in the Latin American region and
the regulatory challenges associated with it.

Prof. Bart Preneel from the University of Leuven,

Belgium, shared his views on Novel opportunities and
Novel Tradeoffs in Blockchain. Professor Preneel,
started his talk with the history of currency and the
various forms and functions it has morphed into, over
time. He mentioned that before the world saw Bitcoin,
there was an earlier rush to create Digital Money and
e-gold was one such example. Trying to set in some
realistic expectation, Professor Preneel compared the
results of the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging
Technologies for the years 2016 to 2018 and stated
that Blockchain was in between the ‘peak of inflated
expectations’ and ‘trough of disillusionment. He also
elucidated on current Blockchain challenges in terms
of scalability, consensus mechanism, transparency
versus privacy and governance of decentralized
systems.

The next speaker in the Key Note Session, Mr. Sreeram

Ananthasayanam, Partner, PwC India, spoke on ‘Making
Blockchain Real’. He spoke on 4 strategies that were
needed to overcome Blockchain’s Trust Paradox. He
emphasized on the importance of strategic clarity, need for
eco-system(s), interoperability and scalability, varios
operating models, design principles and the critical aspect
of regulatory uncertainty. He reiterated the fact that whilst
making the business case, one needed to be sure to think
big, plan for it but start small and scale-up rapidly.
Ms. Mani Dasgupta, CMO, IBM Global Business
Services, USA was the final speaker in the pre-lunch
session. In response to the question of ‘How to market
Blockchain and position Trust’, Ms. Dasgupta cited the
importance of the need to pick the target market, ask the
right questions and collaborate. She also spoke about the
need to be able to articulate the capabilities of Blockchain
minus its jargons for greater acceptance in the business
world.

The post lunch session began with a Blockchain Quiz

conducted by Shri. Prodip Mukhopadhay (Director –
Webel Informatics Limited). The quiz witnessed intense
competition amongst the participants of the event and the winners were awarded.

The session that followed was the ‘Call for Projects’ demonstration wherein 6 teams- were selected to
present their product/solution to the audience. These 6 were selected out of a total of about 70 project
submissions. The names of the teams who presented their solutions to the public were - Intelizest
Consulting Private Limited, Hashprix, TERI, Infimonk, OUM Technology Solutions, Cyber Peace Centre
of Excellence. The competition consisted of 2 categories – Jury’s awards and People Awards. To
participate in the ‘people awards’ category, the participants were encouraged to vote for their favourite
teams on the website – vote.nltr.otrg and help them win a Kindle each.
The day ended with a panel discussion on the topic - Transforming India using Blockchain. The
distinguished panel members of the discussion were:

1. Prof. Dhiren Patel – Director, VJTI

2. Mr. Ram Kiran Dhulipala – Strategy and Operations Officer, Director General’s Office at
ICRISAT
3. Mr. Subbu Jois – Founder, Aurigraph.IO
4. Mr. Prasanna Lohar – Head Innovation and Architecture, DCB Bank
5. Mr. Pavan Adipuram – Founder and CEO, ChitMonks
6. Mr. Dilip Krishnaswamy – VP New Tech Initiatives, Reliance Jio Infocomm

Mr. Thampy Koshy, Partner, E&Y

India moderated the panel
discussion around various facets of
the Indian economy where
Blockchain could have a major
impact. Discussions centered around
implementation of Blockchain in
Agriculture, Banking, Telecom in
India, ISO regulations pertaining to
Blockchain and the current
throughput of the Blockchain
systems around the world. The panel
also took a few questions that were
raised by the audience.
 Highlights of Day 2
The second day of the Global Blockchain Congress- Consensus
2018, began with the first Key Note Session by Professor
Kouichi Sakurai, Kyushu University, Japan titled ‘Security,
Privacy and trust of Blockchain’. Professor Sakurai began his
speech with the current labour market condition in Japan which is
expected to see layoffs due to the rising importance of AI and
Blockchain. He also mentioned about the weakness of Proof of
Work (51% attack) consensus mechanism and cited that in May
2018, 51% attack worked against Bitcoin Gold which led to a loss of
USD 18 Million.

Mr. Rajesh Nambiar, General Manager, IBM Corporation,

Singapore followed up the discussion with his talk titled ‘Towards the
economic utopia of a waste-less world’. Mr. Nambiar spoke about the
quantum of economic waste in the existing Supply Chain network
which amounted to more than 5% of Global GDP and therefore there
was scope for Blockchain to remove the barriers to trade and increase
efficiency. He also alluded to the power of network externality – the
biggest barrier and the biggest incentive to embrace blockchain. Mr.
Nambiar ended his talk with IBM’s Supply Chain platform on
Blockchain – TradeLens and its progress.

Mr. Junya Yoshizaki, COO, Chaintope Malaysia was the

next Key Note Speaker who spoke on Blockchain and its use-
cases in the Energy sector. He discussed the current
limitation of microgrid and mentioned a few blockchain
projects in the energy sector – LO3 Energy, Electrify, Power
Ledger, We Power, Energy Web Foundation. He also opined
that P2P energy trading platform should utilize the existing
power grid . Mr. Yoshizaki, concluded his talk with a
blockchain solution – Project Bintang – a platform which
lets generators and consumers transact energy via an
exchange system.
 The next topic - ‘Quantifying Social Capital via
Blockchain’ was addressed by Mr. Sourav Kumar
Tomar from Chaintope, Malaysia who spoke about
‘Trust’ and ‘Social Capital’. TrustChain is the
company’s platform which lets people move from a
‘capitalist economy’ to one wherein users create and
own their own data. The platform lets users receive
points based on social values – e.g. gratitude,
empathy and support that they receive from others.
In return people with many points can more easily
receive personal support or financial assistance.

Honorable Minister of Finance,

Information Technology &
Electronics, Industry Commerce and
Enterprises, Micro Small and
Medium Enterprises and Textiles -
Dr. Amit Mitra, arrived at the venue and
was felicitated by Additional Chief
Secretary, Shri Debashis Sen. Dr. Amit
Mitra released to the public a Webel and
PwC co-branded Thought
Leadership paper titled ‘Automating
Trust in Citizen Services’. The paper was
presented to the Honourable MIC by PwC
partners – Mr Amulya Patnaik, Mr. Arijit
Chakraborti and Mr. Sreeram
Ananthasayanam.

An E&Y whitepaper titled ‘Blockchain – Features, use-cases, limitations and adoptions’ was also
released to the public by Honourable MIC. Mr. Bhaswar Sarkar and Dinesh Agarwal from E&Y presented
the paper to Dr. Amit Mitra.

After the release of the papers, Honourable MIC moved to the lectern to deliver his special address. Dr.
Amit Mitra spoke about the need for practicality while talking about Blockchain in the Indian societal
context. To put things into perspective, he said that a significant portion of the Indian population had
access to a mobile phone, but not necessarily a smart-phone. He therefore alluded to the challenge
blockchain would face in solving a meaningful societal problem. Honourable MIC challenged the speakers
on the dais and laid out 5 areas – namely, Health, Education, Agriculture, Land and Traffic Management
where Blockchain needed to come out with viable and practical solutions and thereby create a significant
societal impact.

It was now time for giving away awards for the various competitions that were held in the 2 day
conference. The first award to be declared was the ‘Twitter Ambassador’ award. Mr. Raju Alam and
Mr. Prabir Sarkar won an Amazon Kindle each for winning the ‘Highest Tweeter’ and the ‘Best Tweeter’
award respectively.

The next category of awards was dedicated to ‘Call for Projects’ which had seen intense competition
amongst the participants. The ‘People’s choice awards’, wherein the participants of the conference
were encouraged to vote for their favourite teams and help them win a Kindle each, went to the following
teams
 1. Cyber peace centre of Excellence – VJTI (Winner)
2. Infimonk (First runner up)
3. Hashprix (Second runner up)

The awards to the winners, first runner up and second runner up were handed over to the teams by Mr.
Rajesh Nambiar, Mr. Gary Nuttall and Professor Bart Preneel respectively.

In the ‘Jury choice awards’ for ‘Call for Projects’ , the second runner-up, first runner up and the winner
won Rs. 1.5 lakh, Rs. 3 lakh and Rs. 5 lakh respectively. The winners of this category were

1. Cyber peace centre of Excellence – VJTI (Winner)

2. OUM Technology Solutions (First runner up)
3. TERI (Second runner up)

Additional Chief Secretary, Shri Debashis Sen handed over the cash prize to TERI, while Mr.
Gary Nuttall and Miss. Rosine Kadamani awarded OUM Technology Solutions and Cyber peace
centre of excellence respectively.

The next Key Note speaker was Mr. Gary Nuttall,

Managing Director of Distlytics, United Kingdom. Mr.
Nuttall began his speech destroying a few Blockchain
myths – for e.g. the myth that Bitcoin was preferred by
agents for money laundering whereas in reality, Bitcoin
stood at number 30 in order of preference whereas the
most preferred currency was the US dollar ! He said
that just as TCP/IP protocol was used commonly for
internet to share data, similarly blockchain was being
used for the distributed ledger to transfer value. Mr.
Nuttall demonstrated the inefficiencies in the current
banking ledger system and therefore the need for a
distributed ledger system (therefore tamperproof)
which could be restricted to members.

The final speaker of the day was Mr. Chandrashekar

Ghosh – the Founder, MD and CEO of Bandhan Bank.
Mr. Ghosh captivated the audience as he delved back in
time and recounted the various incidents that he had
experienced in his quest to solve the problem of abject
poverty that he had seen while working in an NGO. He
also added his learning from each incident and
encouraged the entrepreneurs to follow the principle of
PHD – Passion, Hard Work and Determination, for
success.

Glimpses and reflections of the Global Blockchain

Congress – Consensus 2018, encapsulated in the form of
a short AV clip, was then played. The clip also contained
Honourable MIC, Dr Amit Mitra’s message to the
delegates of the event.

The audience then rose up for the National Anthem and the two day Global Blockchain Congress –
Consensus 2018 was brought to a close.
MEDIA COVERAGE